Colombia set, as an objective, the consolidation of an effective and reliable patent system. This objective has been reached as it has been statistically proven. According to the Colombian Intellectual Property Office, namely the Industry and Commerce Superintendency (SIC), the whole patent procedure now takes, depending on the technical field, from 1 to 3 years, which entails an improvement in comparison to the last decades, where a patent application could last more than 5 years.

In such a context, it is worth recalling the latest developments made by the Colombian patent system in order to reduce both filing fees and decision times.

However, improvements regarding national legislation is not the only driving factor. Indeed, the signature of several international agreements with other national and regional patent offices has meant significant advances in improving patent proceedings and services. Through these agreements, Colombia has contributed to the economic development, offering greater trading opportunities to Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

All these measures have effectively increased the number of patent applications (between 2011 and 2016, SIC reported an increase of 345% in the number of patent applications) and it is expected to continue growing over the next years.

Protecting your inventions in Colombia

After drafting a patent application, you have to decide where to file it. A patent granted by the Intellectual Property Office of Colombia, provides only national protection, due to the territorial nature of IPRs.

In order to acquire protection in multiple territories, investors and entrepreneurs as the European SMEs may submit their applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty system; which Colombia joined on February, 2001.

The PCT is an international cooperation agreement, that enables to file a single “international” or “PCT” patent application valid across all the countries/regions in the PCT system, (see the full list of the 152 PCT members here), instead of filing several separate regional/national patent applications requiring multiple tasks such as translations and even taxes.

Keep in mind that whether or not the patent is finally granted remains under the exclusive competence of each national or regional intellectual property office.Each office will examine the application according to their national or regional laws. Thus, even if the application is international, the granting process, decision and its effects remain national.

The PCT is not only a cost-effective route to protect IPRs internationally. It will also allow to save and “buy time”, since the applicant gets up to 18 additional months to delay both:

the decision of whether or not to pursue patent protection and;

the substantial costs of the patent procedure arising in the national phase: appointing a foreign attorney, paying official fees and translate the application and documents required to the official language (when necessary). Take into account that some IP Offices offer reduced fees for SMEs.

This additional period may be crucial for European SMEs seeking to expand their own market, since it allows them to adequately evaluate where to pursue patent protection, and get more information regarding the novelty and the technical value of their invention.

Colombia joins the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH)

Examining patent applications is a complicated task. Patent application are technical and complex documents, the examination carried out by patent examiners is exhaustive and the workload important. These were one of the main reasons that led to the creation of the so-called Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH): they constitute a work-sharing initiative between different IP offices, allowing patent applicants to request accelerated processing in the national phase.

The Global PPH (GPPH) Pilot Program launched in 2014, involves 24 patent offices around the world. Colombia, effectively joined on July, 2017, being the first and only (so far) adherent from Latin America. Under the GPPH, applicants can benefit from an accelerated examination through a simple procedure at their request.

To that end, patent examiners in a national or regional office are allowed to reuse the documents issued in the framework of a prior exam accomplished by another participating PPH office such as the Written Opinion issued by the international search and examination authorities.

The main goal of this procedure is to provide a fast-track prosecution and ease search and examination tasks, which directly benefits stakeholders. However, these documents are not binding, thus the final decision about whether or not to grant the patent rests within the hands of the national IP Office where the application has been filed according to its own applicable law.

It is, therefore, to be expected that such an agreement will be a boost for business, innovation and commercial growth of European SMEs. Indeed, shorter timelines stimulates SMEs’ creative intellectual endeavor for the benefit of public interest.

In order to be eligible for the GPPH, the applicant shall comply with the two following indispensable conditions:

A patent application must have been already filed before at least two GPPH participating offices by the applicant.

One or more claims should have already been deemed as patentable by any of the other offices involved.

The Global PPH pilot program superseded bilateral PPH pilot programs between the Colombian patent office and the other PPH partner offices. Participating Offices of the Global PPH pilot are listed here.

Since it is a pilot program, the limit of patent application before SIC is of 30 per month or 300 per year.

Benefits arising from the use of GPPH:

Effective reduction of patent pendency, (the amount of time between the filing date and the final decision’s day granting or refusing the patent).

Shortening of the examination period, because of the possibility to reuse search/examination history.

Allows to save time, money and effort for both applicants and GPPH participating offices.

Harmonization of qualifying requirements.

Improvement in the quality, since the previous work serves: as a basis for an accurate assessment of the patentability criteria; and also as an exchange of good practices between offices.

Colombia’s accession to the GPPH, is a clear sign of the active role that the country wishes to play in the international scene, in order to strengthen investors’ confidence.
If your company wishes any further detailed information about protecting your IPRs in Latin America, do not hesitate to visit the Latin America IPR SME Helpdesk website or to contact our Helpline, it is free, fast and confidential.

Argentina is one of the countries that will introduce in 2018 some major changes in its Intellectual Property Law.

That´s why all SMEs should be aware that change is coming and make sure to count on specialized practitioners to guide them through these changing times.

The Decree Nº 27/2018, published on January the 11th, 2018, seeks to reduce and simplify proceedings and timeframes before Public Offices. The main aim of these measures is to ensure a public administration synonym of efficiency, effectiveness and quality in its relations with the citizens.

The Decree is in force since January the 12th, 2018, but some of the changes need to be implemented and developed through specific guidelines, which are still under issuance and revision period. Additionally, resolutions issued by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) should also be taken into account.

Given the major and substantial changes introduced by the Decree, the same has also been sent, in parallel, to the Houses of the Congress to be studied and approved under the form of a law.

What are the most relevant changes?

Regarding trademarks:

Rhe opposition procedure is changed: if the parties cannot reach a settlement regarding oppositions within a 3-month time period, the PTO will be in charge of resolving about them. Said resolution can be appealed before Federal Courts;

Be aware that partial cancellation for lack of use is introduced;

There is now an obligation to declare the use of the mark, between the year 5thand the end of the year 6th of validity;

Nullity actions may be solved by the PTO, instead of a Court of Justice.

One of the most important changes is the one operated regarding the opposition proceeding: mediation and Court actions are no longer mandatory to overcome an opposition, being the PTO in charge of taking a decision on the subject. This will reduce the costs for SMEs when solving oppositions in this country.

Regarding Patents and Utility Models:

It is no longer necessary to submit the certificate of priority, being enough to claim the priority specifications. It is during the substantive examination that the Examiner might request a copy of the priority document and the corresponding translation;

Reduction of the terms for the proceedings, i.e., the term to pay the substantive examination is reduced from 3 years to 18 months, for example, for Patents, and from 3 years to 3 months, for Utility Models;

For Utility Models once the examination fee is payed, the PTO will conduct the substantive examination, then publish the application and if no observations are filed, the application will be granted.

Regarding Industrial Models and Designs:

Hand-made models and designs can now be protected.

New exceptions regarding the loss of novelty

Possibility to request delaying the publication of the grant for up to six months,

An application may include up to 20 models/designs, as long as they belong to the same class according to the International Classification,

Renewals can now be filed six months before the expiration date and up to six months after said due date (with the corresponding increase in the fees).

IP owners and practitioners will have to monitor further developments and interpretation of this new piece of law, not only from the PTO but also from the House of the Congress. There are still several interesting issues that will be subject to a follow up report. Stay tuned!

In the last years, we have noticed in Europe an increase in the number of fraudulent invoices being sent to users relating to trademarks or patents applications. If you receive an invoice that is unexpected or from an unfamiliar entity, please contact your Industrial Property (IP) Office or attorney before paying the invoice.

While many of the fraudulent invoices are sent via regular mail, some are sent by email. In Brazil, for instance, users are also receiving phone calls from people pretending that they belong to the legal department of the IP Office and that the applicant is at risk of losing his trademark. Typically, the invoices seek payment for various services related to applications: registration fees, filing fees or monitoring fees.

Such invoices —which are intentionally designed to look like real invoices from an official source— have nothing to do with the processing of your patent application or trademark registration, and the services they purport to provide have no value beyond the services already provided by your national, regional office or an international organization, such as WIPO, EPO or EUIPO.

National Patent and Trademark offices, as well as relevant international organisations and user associations, are working to inform users about this trend and to help them avoid falling for such scams. For example, warnings have been posted on several websites that include names of known perpetrating “companies” and examples of misleading letters. The Trademark International Index and Trademark Info Corp. became very popular in Mexico a few years ago.

As regards criminal proceedings, the EUIPO closely cooperated with the Swedish public prosecutor’s office who brought to Court an extensive scam scheme principally targeting EUTM owners. The Court passed four custodial sentences ranging between two months and one year for four of the defendants for attempted aggravated fraud.

The more this practice spreads over the Latin American countries, (in Brazil has some significance), the more important it is for applicants of international trademarks or patents from these countries to be aware of this situation.

If you are a PCT or an International Trademark applicant and you receive one of these invoices, first check WIPO’S warning page and see if it matches any of the examples. If not listed there, send an e-mail to WIPO with a copy so it can be added to the collection.

If you registered by yourself, you are also recommended to contact the National Intellectual Property Office involved to be sure that there is no scam and make a complaint, if afirmative. Most of them provide assistance on this issue (i.e. Brazil), but if you want to know more about what to do in case you receive one of those invoices, do not hesitate to contact our free of charge, confidential, fast Helpline. Our experts will be happy to support you.

This article has been written by Natália Barzilai and Gisela de Lamare de Paiva Coelho

As a result of the massive backlog of two hundred and forty-four thousand patents applications as of May, 2017, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) has been studying multiple measures to continually reduce the already famous tardiness of its examinations. The BPTO has come up with some controversial ideas.

Successfully, the BPTO has created categories in order to speed up its process, the first one being the “Green Patents”, reducing by 90% the processing time regarding the analysis of environment related innovations. After such a positive outcome, in June, 22, the BPTO extended this project to innovations from the Science and Technology Institutions (STI). Although it is still a temporary strategy limited to a certain number of “STI Patent” applications, the BPTO seeks to reduce from the average time from 10,8 years to 10 months as it is already the case with “Green Patents”.

Another conservative approach to reduce the backlog created by the reduce number of technical examiners, is to join forces with ANVISA (Brazilian Health Agency). As required by the Brazilian IP Law, the BPTO must send all pharmaceutical patents to the Health Agency to be analyzed and check out if there is no forbidden substance in it. Only after obtaining prior approval the BPTO’s technical exam can start. Having such a relevant role in the process of the analysis, the BPTO has proposed ANVISA to send its examiners to the BPTO facilities. Such small measure can help optimize the proceedings not only because the BPTO has an automatic system but because it also prevents losing time between Agencies’ transfers. In addition, the BPTO and ANVISA have established two guidelines in 2017 to fasten ANVISA’s analysis. Now granting of prior approval is based only on the presence of forbidden substance – not on the patentability of the innovation as it used to be. These guidelines not only shorten the analysis period but also provide more legal security as the Health Agency is obliged to grant the approval based only in public health requirement.

Besides those measures, facing the original source of the backlog, the BPTO is studying the possibility of implementing the successful method applied by the Japan Patent Office (JPO). As presented by Takuya Yasui in December, 2017, Japan successfully tackled its backlog by adopting two measures. First, by sub-contracting all preliminary activities, such as research before technical decisions. Today JPO has 10 companies providing its research and, even though they are private companies, supervisors are often retired JPO’s examiners. Second, hiring temporary examiners for 5-year periods which can be renewed for 5 more. With such changes, the time until the exam was reduced from 2,4 years in 2008 to 10,4 months in 2014.

Regarding the most controversial proposals, the BPTO has issued Resolution nº 193 seeking to expedite the examination of Brazilian patent applications under the PCT. In this Resolution, the BPTO has regulated that it will not perform a search of its own and will only incorporate the search already performed by an “office of reference”, meaning, International Searching Authorities (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authorities (IPEA).

The BPTO also started a public consultation for a proposal establishing that patent applications filed or with the national phase initiated up to the date of publication of the future regulation, will be granted 90 days, following a notice of admissibility, to decide whether they want to opt or not for a simplified patent application procedure, provided that they meet certain requirements and are not the subject of third-party observations (also called pre-grant oppositions). Patent applications for pharmaceutical products and processes are, in principle, excluded from this simplified procedure, potentially for political reasons and because of the scrutiny of ANVISA regarding these patents.

As reported in a previous publication at Dannemann Siemsen News[1], according to the proposed simplified procedure, the patent applications to which it applies will be automatically allowed without substantive examination, provided that a few requirements are met:

The filing of the patent application or request for entry into the national phase (in the case of PCT applications) should have occurred before the publication date of the proposed regulation;

The application has been published or the early publication requested up to thirty days from the date of publication of the future regulation;

Examination of the patent application should have been requested within 30 days following the publication date of the future regulation;

Annuities payments must be in order; and

No official actions regarding patentability have been published.

Our general advice would be to remove patent applications related to important inventions from the simplified procedure due to the following reasons: (i) the future patents are more likely to face validity challenges; (ii) BPTO’s delay would be compensated somehow since our IP Law currently guarantees a minimum of 10-year patent term from granting date; and (iii) it is possible to put an application to a fast-track examination in case of unauthorized exploitation or through a writ of mandamus.

In particular applicants having a large number of pending patent applications in Brazil should begin to chart a strategy in relation to their portfolio in view of possible new regulations. Meanwhile, we are hoping for the best.

Issues regarding competition law and IP can, on their own, provoke sever headaches. However, these are not isolated subjects that never cross paths. Problems can grow exponentially when they do and require every bit of our attention and perspicacity.

Competition law and IP cannot be considered as pursuing opposite goals. Quite on the contrary, they must be seen as complementary. Granting exclusive rights through IP promotes innovation and competition between undertakings, the final beneficiary being the customer. This affirmation is also true when talking about Competition law: ensuring competition on the merits and avoiding distortion of the competition, which in the end will promote general economic welfare. In their dynamic relation, competition does not seek to impede the existence of exclusive rights, rather it seeks to avoid an abuse in the exploitation of those rights.

Compulsory licensing is one of the important ‘flexibilities’ recognized under Article 31 of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This is true since it makes it easier for WTO members with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector to avoid the trouble of negotiating expensive licenses with big pharmaceutical companies who are in a clear position of power in these negotiations. So far, only two countries in Latin America (Brazil and Ecuador) have made effective use of compulsory licensing provisions.

A compulsory license is generally ordered as a remedy when intellectual property law is not capable to offer a suitable remedy to a situation, usually because the owner of the IPR and the licensee are incapable of reaching a satisfactory settlement. Through these licenses, the owner of intellectual property is required to provide at least one other firm or a government with a right to import, reproduce, and/or sell the intellectual property.

Patent legislation in Latin America provides for different grounds for the granting of compulsory license:

Although some Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have been signed between Latin American countries and Europe (with Mexico, Chile and Colombia, for example) such agreements have not introduced any limitations on the possible grounds for compulsory licenses.

When granting a compulsory license, the competent authority will face a number of different challenges. First, it must justify the grant of such a license under one of the conditions above mentioned. Second, the authority will have to establish the life of the compulsory license. Finally, setting a correct level of royalty payment is another challenge to ensure proper retribution of the patent owner.

Real life cases: Brazil and Ecuador

In 2007, Brazil decided to override the patent on an AIDS drug in order to make it available under the country’s free treatment program.

Prior investigation lead the government to note that Merck was selling its drug at cheaper prices in countries at the same development level but with fewer people in need of treatment than Brazil; the Indian generic versions were much cheaper than Merck’s product.

Prior to the grant, the Brazilian government engaged in negotiations with the patent holder in order to achieve an acceptable price reduction. During these negotiations, Merck offered a price reduction from US$1.59 to 1.10 per dose, which was deemed unsatisfactory by the Brazilian government. Hence, through Presidential Decree No. 6.108 (4 May 2007) the government decided the grant of a “compulsory license, on the ground of public interest, of Efavirenz’s patents, for public non-commercial use” for a period of 5 years (renewable for the same period31) and a royalty fee for the patent owner of 1.5 % of the finished product.

This decision was far from popular. Although health activists, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, reacted positively, pharmaceutical industries were not pleased with the decision.

In Ecuador, the granting of compulsory licenses is based on the Presidential Decree No. 118 of November 16, 2009, that established “of public interest, access to medicines used for the treatment of diseases that affect the population of Ecuador and that are priorities for public health”. It also specifically specified that compulsory licenses could be issued for patents protecting medicines for human use that are necessary for the treatment of such diseases.

Following this Presidential Decree, the IEPI (Insituto Ecuatoriano de la Propiedad Intelectual) issued a Resolution (Resolution No. 10-04 P) with Guidelines on how to issue a compulsory license in the case of pharmaceutical patents.

Thanks to these instruments, on April 2010, the government of Ecuador granted a compulsory license for an anti-retroviral drug, to Eskegroup SA, a local distributor of a generic produced by an Indian company.

The government of Ecuador, on June 2012, granted a second compulsory license to Acromax Laboratorio Quimico Farmaceutico S.A. regarding a drug protected by and held by the Glaxo Group. After confirmation by the Ministry of Public Health that the pharmaceutical was a priority medicine, the compulsory license was finally granted. The compulsory license is available until the expiry of the patent in May 2018. This action was taken in order to enable the government to further expand access to more affordable treatments for HIV and facilitate local production of the product, leading to an important reduction in costs.

Conclusion

As examined above, although only used in three cases so far, compulsory licenses have been used against pharmaceutical patents. The European Court of Justice has been more inclined to use compulsory licenses as a “punishment” in cases of abuse of dominant position, rather than as a pressure element. In Europe, case law on the subject is rather abundant starting with Magill, which set the basic requirements, later on developed through IMS Health.

In any case, this opens up an interesting debate about pharmaceutical patents, drug prices, health imperatives and incentives. Some medicines are not even available -period- in some markets. One of the reason is that our current patent system does not provide sufficient incentives in R&D for solutions to problems that mostly affect the poor. Another challenge arises from the very nature of the patent regime: innovators are rewarded with a temporary monopoly. In the context of life-saving drugs or vaccines, this monopoly will have a more meaningful impact on poor people who cannot afford the essential drug.

One solution to face this challenge might be voluntary licensing involving contracts with generic manufacturers to distribute and sell drugs in markets where there is no profit to make for branded companies. Voluntary licensing could present several advantages: generic manufacturers would be able to distribute patented medicines in certain countries; multiple licensees can be granted allowing to sell generic versions at prices freely established in certain low and middle-income nations; royalties will be paid to patent owners or economies of scale can be made. All the above would avoid raising competition concerns by creating effective competition through licenses offered to multiple generic manufacturers.

Why should some Latin American IPOs improve their patent granting procedure?

According to OECD´s Oslo Manual innovation is defined as “the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations”.

Therefore a country´s ability to innovate does not exclusively rely on how much research is developed in a country but on how much of this research reaches the market, directly or indirectly.

Despite a certain degree of debate concerning patents as boosters of innovation, it is true that there is a relevant percentage of innovation that reaches the market by means of patents.

Delays in registration are traditionally perceived as barriers for the entrance of foreign innovators and companies. However, this is only a partial view, since such deficiencies also entail a negative impact on their national innovation and entrepreneurship environment.

Effect on the Industrial Application analysis: the priority period

Since Paris Convention patent applicants in any of the member countries of the convention, enjoy a 12-month priority period to file their patent in any other member countries, while keeping its first application date as the priority date.

In terms of market entrance, 12 months is a very short period of time to assess whether the market accepts a product or not, especially if it is an innovative one. Therefore, only those companies that are very sure of the success of the product and/or have the means to predict such a success will invest their resources in seeking patent protection.

In such a scenario, only few SMEs and inventors would decide to invest their time and money to protect their inventions abroad and/or, once decided, would limit the number of international filings.

Fortunately, the Patent Cooperation Treaty extends the priority period. Once the PCT filing fee has been paid (around €1200) applicants can decide in which countries they want to protect their patent within approximately 30 months (depending on the country). Under this timeframe, even SMEs can assess if they want to enter certain countries.

Therefore, Latin American countries that are not members of the PCT (Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela) are not only discouraging foreign IP applicants to protect their inventions, but also limiting the access of their own nationals’ patents to international protection.

This barrier has a stronger deterrent effect for foreign SMEs and inventors rather than big companies, which file their applications regardless of there being a PCT or not.

Effect on Application: Search and Examination Report

All those IP offices that are able to provide the Search and Examination Report within a short period of time are giving their applicants a competitive advantage.

If the IP office is able to issue the Preliminary Search Report and/or the Examination Report in a short timeframe, the IP applicants will be able to save money by:

Withdrawing the application and/or not filing the PCT if the patent is not new or inventive or;

Limiting or erasing claims that lack novelty or inventiveness to prevent facing delays related to other IPOs’ objections.

Thus, Latin American IPR Offices that cannot issue the PSR and/or the ER in twelve months from the priority/filing date are forcing their nationals to face the International Phase of the PCT or the filing in third countries without information concerning the strength of their patents or at least an overview of the expectations of succeeding in the granting of the patent; this is a scenario that may lead to losing all the amounts invested in the application, translations and any other administrative costs.

In recent years some Latin American IP Offices seemed to notice this negative impact and have started to take measures to improve their performance at internal level; by improving their internal practices, and thanks to international cooperation both at interregional level (e.g. the PPH agreements signed with EPO, Spanish IP Office and USPTO) and at intraregional level, with tools like the Prosur PPH or CADOPAT.

Effect on Exploitation and Enforcement: Granting

Delays in granting the patent also have direct consequences in the use and defence of the patent. Despite the “standard” 20-year term of a patent, a patent’s lifecycle in certain sectors, such as smartphones, tends to be shorter. In some cases, a patent granted five or six years from the filing date have no or very reduced economic interest.

In addition, and generally speaking, pending patent right holders benefit from very little or any rights concerning enforcement until the patent is granted. Such a circumstance prevents them from bringing actions against infringers, which does not only harm their interests, but also their licensees’, including local companies.

Furthermore, long granting periods also harm competitors. A pending patent operates as a “warning” advice for competitors, who are very likely to avoid incurring in acts that may be prohibited by the patent owner once the patent is granted. Hence, a patent office that incurs in delays in rejecting a null patent creates uncertainty to its nationals about whether or not they are able to use the invention.

For instance, in the case were the same patent is rejected by National IP Offices, if country A rejected it in year 2 from filing date and country B rejected it in year 5, country A competitors would enjoy three additional years when they can freely use and exploit the invention in the country, whereas country B competitors will be subject to uncertainty until the patent is rejected.

To conclude, time is a key factor for the patent system. Although inefficiencies in patent registration procedures may harm foreign companies and innovators’ interests, the harm caused to its own national innovation system is even worse. Moreover, very long and formal procedures lead to a negative perception over the patent system in general, and discourage national innovators from protecting their inventions both nationally and abroad, which directly affects the country´s ability to compete in a knowledge-based economy.

Over the past few years, Intellectual Property Offices around the world have been busy preparing and negotiating Patent Prosecution Highways (PPH) agreements.

Better known by its abbreviation, the PPH is a system of bilateral and multilateral agreements particularly aimed at reducing the costs and time of patent examinations among applicants and participating patent offices. For doing so, the system enables an applicant with allowable/ granted claims in a patent application of an Office of Earlier Examination (OEE) to obtain an accelerated process examination of sufficiently corresponding claims in applications filed (but not yet examined) in other offices -Office of Later Examination (OLE)-.

It must, however, be noted that under PPH the OLE agrees to expedite the examination process by using the data and information provided by the OEE; but following the territoriality principle of patents, it reserves the right to grant or deny the patent.

In Latin America, two regional key networks have been created, namely, Pacific Alliance and PROSUR.

On July 1st, 2016 the PPH Pilot Program of the Pacific Alliance, made up of Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, came into force. Some months later, on September 15th, the PPH Pilot Program of PROSUR, formed by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, came into force. Nonetheless, Brazil adherence to the PPH was on December 19th, 2016, while the final entry into force of Ecuador still awaits the internal approval of its Government.

These Pilot Programs are expected to last 3 years, and renewable for an additional one. As we will see below, their implementation is carried out according to the guides prepared by the participating Industrial Property Offices, which establish the requirements, conditions and procedures to participate in the PPH Pilot Program.

For the purpose of giving certain flexibilities to the applicants, both networks decided to follow the “Mottainai” and the “PCT- PPH” modalities.

According to the PPH MOTTAINAI modality, an applicant can request to expedite its patent examination process at OLE using the results of the OEE, regardless of the office in which the first deposit occurs, provided that the OEE and OLE have signed a PPH MOTTAINAI agreement. By eliminating the directional requirement of the original PPH model, this alternative relaxes the requirements related to the order in which the applications were filed and the priority which they claimed.

Regarding the PCT- PPH, the OLE could utilize the positive results obtained in the PCT international phase to request accelerated processing in the national phase. In particular, in this modality OLE´s patent examiners can use the following work products:

the written opinion of the International Searching Authority (ISA),

the written opinion of the International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA), or

the international preliminary examination report issued within the framework of the PCT, subject to certain conditions.

In this region, WIPO has designated INPI (Brazil) and INAPI (Chile) as ISA/IPEA offices. According to this, the country members of the Pacific Alliance and PROSUR may benefit from the international PCT work elaborated by those offices.

To get a closer look at the system, let’s now see how the Pacific Alliance PPH system has worked for the Mexican inventor Sergio Fernando Grijalva, who was the first applicant within the PPH of the Pacific Alliance in filing and obtaining a patent granted.

His application was filed on March 3rd, 2016 in the National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI). Once the PPH was requested, it was necessary to check if the application met the requirements set in the INAPI- IMPI’s guide to participate, which are:

The Chilean and the Mexican application must be equivalent, which means that they must have the same initial date, either the same priority date or the same filing date.

The corresponding application must have been examined substantively and have one or more claims considered by IMPI as patentable/ allowable.

All claims submitted for INAPI’S examination -as originally filed or as modified- must sufficiently correspond to one or more of the claims found patentable/ allowable by IMPI.

The application filed before INAPI shall has been published in the Official Gazette.

The substantive examination of the application of INAPI has not yet begun. In other words, the PPH must be requested before the examiner is appointed.

In the present case, the Mexican applicant was required to modify his application before INAPI as to make its claims sufficiently corresponding to the ones granted by IMPI. Thanks to this correction, the research and examination results done by IMPI could be used during INAPI´s patent prosecution.

As result of the prosecution of this patent by the PPH, the substantive examination process was executed in less than 3 months, which contributed to grant the patent in less than 12 months, rather than the 36 months that non-contentious patent application may take.

As we have seen, the existing PPH networks in Latin America can contribute effectively to speed up the substantive examination process of the participating offices, by avoiding the repetition of unnecessary administrative actions, while at the same time reduce related institutional and applicants’ costs. Moreover, and not previously mentioned, using these services do not, as a general rule, require additional fees.

For all of the reasons above mentioned, companies and inventors are encouraged to benefit from the existing PPH schemes. As for this purpose, if you are seeking patent protection internationally, you are highly recommended to verify the PPH agreements of those countries you are planning to expand your patent protection, as well as check out the modalities they adopted (i.e. “Mottainai” and “PCT- PPH”), as they can provide you an additional chance to successfully accomplish your patent registration in Latin America.

About Your LATAM FlagshIP

The Latin America IPR SME Helpdesk team proudly welcomes you to its brand new blog, in which you will find updated information concerning Intellectual Property Rights in Latin America, as well as other interesting information about SMEs, Internationalization, R&D or Innovation.

Implemented by

The Latin America IPR SME Helpdesk is a free service for SMEs which provides practical, objective and factual information about Intellectual Property Rights in Latin America. The services are not of a legal or advisory nature and no responsibility is accepted for the results of any actions made on the basis of its services. The content and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the European Commission and/or the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises or any other body of the European Union.

Before taking specific actions in relation to IPR protection or enforcement all customers are advised to seek independent advice. Neither the European Commission nor the Agency may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained herein.
Our Privacy Policy